Sydney bus route services to be privatised

Bus services on one of Sydney's busiest routes are set to be privatised following years of poor performance, the NSW government says.

The contract for Bus Region 6 - which runs 233 routes from Olympic Park in the city's west to Kensington in the city's southeast - will be put out to private tender to ensure a more reliable service, Transport Minister Andrew Constance says.

"There have been improvements in recent years, but the State Transit (Authority) still lags a long way behind its industry competitors in measures like on-time running and reliability," he said in a statement on Monday.

The services had some of the worst on-time running results last year, and attracted the highest number of complaints out of Sydney's metropolitan area in recent years.

The government will continue to set Opal fares and timetables, and regulate safety standards once the routes are privatised.

The inner-west region is one of four in NSW in which buses are run by the government-owned State Transit Authority.

Labor's spokeswoman for transport Jodi McKay says she fears the plans are a prelude to a wholesale sell-off of Sydney's transport network.